Merlin's Fathers: The Sacred and the Profane

Merlin the magician has long provided authors a figure with which to explore the relationship of man to nature, society, and history. Contemporary authors of children's literature have joined in this exploration by producing tales about Merlin's childhood and youth. In so doing, they have not only filled in biographical details omitted by earlier writers less interested in the experiences of childhood, for example Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory, but, more importantly, they have offered a welcome perspective on the contribution of father(s), present and absent, actual and surrogate, divine and human, to a figure with the archetypal powers that the Merlin of legend possesses.¹

The adult Merlin exemplifies fully the Jungian archetype of the wise old man who appears in dreams in the guise of magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any other male possessing authority. Essential to that archetype is its personification of "Spirit."² Spirit may be construed in psychological terms, as in Jungian theory; in anthropological terms, as when it denotes a "mana personality" (a holder of extraordinary supernatural or magical powers); or in religious terms, as a "Holy Spirit," to which one is connected or by which one is possessed. The image of Merlin most familiar to us, that of wonder-worker and mentor, contains both the shamanic and psychological elements of the concept of Spirit; in some versions, he is also at times Godpossessed. It is this spiritual dimension of the adult Merlin's personality that offers perhaps the most fertile background against which to read the father/son relationships explored in contemporary reworkings of the legend for children. Merlin cannot become the Wise Old Man and carry out his responsibilities to King Arthur and the British people until he has established during his childhood his connection with the world of the spirit.

Further, the religious dimensions of Merlin's legend are not to be understood only from within the context of religious history-that is, as an expression of specific belief systems such as Druidism or Christianity-but more importantly from the broader perspective of religious philosophy. I will therefore draw upon the work of the religious philosopher and historian Mircea Eliade to help illuminate the character of Merlin and the nature of his relations with the father-figures scripted for him by the contemporary authors Peter Dickinson, Pamela F. Service, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Jane Yolen.

While motives for selecting Merlin's early years as the storyteller's narrative ground no doubt vary from author to author and from story to story, the consequences of that selection appear remarkably consistent: that is, in rendering the numinous and extra-ordinary figure of Merlin as a child in the world, the author consciously or inadvertently conjures two different-and frequently conflicting-modes of being. While these two modes are commonly identified as the supernatural and the human, Eliade's designations of the sacred and the profane are equally applicable and will be used here.

Even from earliest times these widely divergent categories have been yoked in order to express the wizard and his story; we find them inextricably joined in Geoffrey of Monmouth's famous introduction of the character in his The History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136). Because Geoffrey's report of Merlin's origins not only exemplifies these two modes of being but also provides the basis for many modern retellings like those of Yolen and Service, a brief review is perhaps in order.

Geoffrey, a medieval Christian who nonetheless is influenced by ancient pagan traditions, identifies Merlin's mother as a cloistered nun, the virgin daughter of a petty ruler. When the girl is questioned by King Vortigern about her child's father, she indicates that she has no idea who he is, for she was repeatedly visited and embraced by a mysterious, invisible lover. The king calls in a wise man to see if such a thing is indeed possible. Citing Apuleius' De deo Socratis, the scholar asserts that is certainly is; he goes on to add that the phantom lover is no doubt an "incubus demon." Instead of describing a...